Far from that week when winter lingers, it was sunny that Sunday. April 13, 1975 was a beautiful spring day, a little too beautiful perhaps. Abdel Halim Caracalla gave since the day before, at the palace of Unesco, a dazzling spectacle: Strange wonders. We gave each other the word to go and attend, and places were quickly running out on all dates, until the 20th of the month. This morning, a beautiful ordinary day. Easter had fallen earlier, at the end of March. It was probably, for the schoolchildren, the last day of vacation. Impatient to see the sea once more in its beautiful season, the families were out, dressed up as they say. People dressed up for everything in those days; to visit relatives, to go to a restaurant, to attend a concert or a conference, to take a plane… Instagram did not exist, but the gaze of the entourage was important. In this prosperous, modernist Lebanon, proud of its progress in a lagging Arab world, everyone was jostling to climb the social ladder. The duty of elegance was certainly dictated by this tacit competition, but it was also imposed by the decor. Booming cities displayed new streets and buildings. There was a kind of euphoria to belong to this country whose citizens were firmly convinced that it was the most beautiful in the world.
Suddenly a rumor. The car radio sputters words that the kids in the back can’t understand. The hand shakes a little on the steering wheel. From where did this black cloud appear in the middle of all this blue? We’re going home! It moaned a little, on the bench, but authority, in those days, was not contested. The parents consult each other. Will it be reasonable to go to the show tonight? The fedayeen, expelled from Jordan and returned to Lebanon by King Hussein following Black September, have been displaying provocative and dangerous behavior for some time. What possessed them to send a car crashing into the barriers of the police, in front of this church of Aïn el-Remmané which we were inaugurating that day in the presence of Pierre Gemayel, the founder and president of the Phalangist party whose name is unambiguous? And then shoot into the crowd, into the crowd of worshipers, kill supporters? A little further on, the famous Fargo bus will pass through a neighborhood street carrying Palestinians returning from a political rally, carrying the flags of their factions. A little too noisy, a little too triumphant, brandishing the two fingers of victory at the windows, do they know what awaits them?
For several months now, in the beautiful Mediterranean setting of Beirut, in the gentle routine of families in their Sunday best, mysterious sources have been whispering in the ears of men that they need to arm themselves for you-never-knows. And the weapons, that day, came out of this nowhere of mattresses, cupboards and double-bottomed drawers. Terrorized by the incident in the morning, local residents fought hard for the Fargo. Massacre. Three survivors: the driver and two passengers extracted from under the corpses which finally protected them. Strange wonder, the Caracalla spectacle has taken place. But in the evening, when the artists left, the guerrilla warfare was still going on and the dancer Amira Majed, hit in the spine by a stray bullet, will remain paralyzed for life. Long months without Sundays will follow, where the inhabitants of Beirut, holed up most of the time in shelters, will patiently maintain their elegant manners, between terror and denial. Many will take the road to exile. Others will return to the mountains from where their ancestors descended in search of a better life. The months became years of extinguished fridges, of candles stuck on saucers, of studious nights because studies remained the only certainty, the only passport perhaps, and the academic calendar the only way to count time.
Strange marvel, this April 13, 1975, the last day of our illusions, the first day of the end of a world, signaled to us by the paralysis of a dancer that we would henceforth be forbidden to dance. It was to forget that to obey is not Lebanese.
Far from that week when winter lingers, it was sunny that Sunday. April 13, 1975 was a beautiful spring day, a little too beautiful perhaps. Abdel Halim Caracalla gave since the day before, at the palace of Unesco, a dazzling spectacle: Strange wonders. We gave each other the word to attend, and places were quickly running out on all…
